AUTHOR: Sheri Lynch TITLE: Breathing Easy DATE: 8/09/2006 01:29:00 PM ----- BODY:

Caramia is finally potty-trained! Hooray! I know, I know: she's three for crying out loud and we're terrible parents for not getting this job done a year and a half ago. But I swear: she wasn't ready till now. No, really. Stop rolling your eyes. She wasn't waking up dry, or showing an interest in it, or any of those other signs that you read about in the parenting books. We even have an excuse for our slipshod ways, and it's a good one. Ready? She was so fatigued and crazy as a result of her sleep apnea that she couldn't even begin to worry about making tinkle like a big girl. Now, post-surgery, she's like a different kid. I dreaded that operation. It was a tonsil/adenoid-ectomy. Routine enough, I guess, but when it's your baby, there's nothing routine about any surgery. The thought of my youngest being put under general anesthesia made me so anxious that I couldn't sleep either. Having gone through it once before with her older sister didn't help. In fact, it made it worse. The anesthesia made Olivia terribly sick, and she had a tough time waking up. And Caramia is little, just thirty pounds. How would her tiny body handle it? Turns out, she handled it like a champ. No problems with the anesthesia, no bleeding, no pain that Tylenol couldn't handle. No more Darth Vader breathing, no more jerking awake, over and over again, panicky and gasping. Now she purrs like a kitten and sleeps peacefully through the night. That last is really something -- until this week, we could probably count on one hand the number of times Caramia had slept through the night in three years. Three years! Three years of night waking and night wandering and night crying. We'd hear other parents mention that their infants were now sleeping through the night at eight or ten weeks and it was all we could do not to stick out a foot and trip them. We were beyond envious. We were becoming unstable. Thankfully, that's all behind us -- I hope. I'm thrilled that Caramia is feeling better, and I know that getting the sleep she needs is going to make a huge difference for her. She's already made huge progress. Being potty- trained meant she could join her sister at Camp Tutu this week. It's a half-day ballet program at the YMCA, and a total scream. Yesterday, Caramia burst out of the bathroom hollering to her counselor, "I pooped! I pooped! Now I get a treat!" Okay, so we resorted to bribing her with marshmallows. More bad parenting, I know, I know. I'm sorry!

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